The Winter Deliverance

Winters were harsh in the Wooded Mountains of the North Eastern kingdom. Up in the highest peaks of the continent, the mountains received heavy boulders of snow which blocked out the light on their way down to the usually muddy roads. Villagers would take these roads during summer time with no small degree of comfort. In fact, during most of the year’s months, the roads of the North Eastern Kingdom were the home of much hustle and bustle. Traders, butchers, bakers and even common thieves and ruffians would cross up and down in a seemingly endless flow of colour and noise. As the sky grew dark however, and the year was ready to be born anew, the area would slow down to a seemingly death-like creep. 

 It was the first day of the new year and Dain was making his way up into the mountains with considerable urgency. Pulling a raft laden with thick packaging behind him, he pulled his coat tightly around his head. He looked nervously to catch what light was available. As we took his brisk steps, the ground crunched and each of his legs were knee deep in the snow. 

 There’s smoke behind me, he thought. Some vagrants keeping warm, hopefully... Probably cooking some deer they’ve managed to kill... Either deer or some last wanderer caught out travelling into town when he should’ve known better. 

 Dain pictured himself being eaten by thieves around a winter fire as they rooted through his delivery. He felt for the dagger on his hip. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and think of the warm meal at the end of the journey. Sometimes, Dain wished that he was a drinker. 

 Lost in his thoughts and prime emotions, Dain had felt his cord pull back against his grip and he tumbled inelegantly. He fell down into the snow. 

 Got caught on a rock sticking out of the snow, I reckon. He hoped. 

 He stood up and carried on without wiping snow from his knees. Dain was feeling relief when he was able to carry on without interruption. The smell of smoke was thicker now. The raft’s cord tugged again and he tumbled down. 

 Here we go, he thought as he got to his feet. He took one step and felt the tug. He pulled at the cord with two hands now. The coat, now unclutched, fell open and allowed the wind and snow to enter and dampen Dain’s shirt. He could not force the cord to budge. 

 Dain put his left hand on his dagger. There was quiet besides the whirling winds. He stepped forward to keep his delivery safely behind him. With his gloved hand on the hilt of his weapon, he waited. 

 “Now, just back off, why don’t you,” said Dain. He thought of the way that Uncle George had sounded when he had scared burglars. He hoped that he sounded that way. “I’ve got a knife. A bloody big one and I’ll bleed you out if you don’t leave right now.” 

 Dain looked out into the trees and tried to decide what his next move ought to be. He wished that he was safe at home, or that his uncle was here so that he was not alone to make this decision. 

 He waited in the cold, wondering what the stranger was thinking. Was this a man, a boy or a beast? Was he armed too and deciding to stick him? Perhaps he was the subject of some neighbouring kingdom and he couldn’t understand Dain’s dialect. Perhaps it was a green boy who didn’t know what it was to kill a man and wasn’t sure that he wanted to find out. 

 Dain held his dagger tightly. It felt like such a small and flimsy thing to him now. He imagined a great jagged and bloody weapon pointing at him from the darkness. Is he wondering the same about me? 

 He heard a sudden crunch of the snow and instinctively thrust forwards his left, weapon-wielding arm. Dain understood that he had done the right thing immediately. Someone had rushed him. His dagger met resistance in the form of a human torso. He heard a whimper. It was a higher pitched voice than that of a grown man. A boy not yet grown, he thought. Or a lady. Any sympathy that Dain might have held as a smaller boy had been beaten down by cruel experience and he drove his dagger with two hands now deeper into the stranger’s figure. He twisted his weapon the one way and then the other and round and round. The whimpers became loud gargles. He would not stop until the cries did. 

 When the body finally gave way and ceased resisting, he pulled his blade with one hand and pushed at the now dead stranger with his other. It fell into the snow and the snow crunched. It was falling so thickly now that Dain knew the body would be covered before the hour was over. The body would be recovered in springtime, perhaps by some industrious tradesman setting up the first stall of the season. 

 Dain cursed the stranger for making him waste so much time. He picked up the reins of his raft and carried on his journey. He could not feel his feet now and the scarf over his face was full of snow. Using the back of his hand, for he had elected not to resheath his weapon, Dain shook the snow from his eyes. When he could see, Dain recognised a faint orange light to the distance in front. 

 The fool, he thought to himself. Some idiotic traveller, a foreigner no doubt, is travelling through these woods by torchlight... Every beast within a thousand yards will be smelling you out. 

 Dain adjusted his course to the east ever so slightly. He reminded himself that when the torchlight was directly to his left, he would adjust his course back to his original path. However, as he began walking again upon his new coordinate, he noticed that something was not right. His raft, packed with numerous valuable goods, was now oddly light. He got onto his hands and knees and patted it down. The cloth that held the items down was flat. They were gone! Dain looked around in urgency but they were not be seen anywhere. He looked forwards to where the light was, knowing that he would be killed if he arrived with an empty tray and no parcels. He looked behind him, to the distant darkness where he had gutted the woman or young boy. He had no choice. 

 He turned around and headed back the way he had come. 

 I’ve dropped them, he thought. And now I have to search miles of blackness for something that is probably under three feet of snow! Oh, what is the point? I bet they’re ruined now, anyway! 

Dain swung his left leg over a mound of snow and felt something break his kick. He stooped down, not daring to believe his luck. 

 It’s here. It’s got to be here, he thought, pulling away. This was where I fought the thief! 

 As he thought this, Dain received confirmation that this was indeed the spot where he had fought the thief. A hand burst out of the snowy mound and grasped tightly around Dain’s left ankle. He let out a sudden scream, which he cursed himself for. His uncle would not have screamed. He knew this. But Dain was not his uncle and had always been a coward. He kicked wildly and felt himself wet his trousers. If not for the current situation, the warmth might have been somehow pleasant out in the snow. The hand was pulling with inhuman strength and Dain feared that he would be pulled under. He grasped for the dagger by his side. His coat was in the way. Dain was grabbing desperately, trying to shift the material to get at his weapon. He knew that he could do it easily if he was not in a crisis. 

 A second hand rose from the frosty grave and grabbed at Dain’s stomach, its hand grasped at the urine stained puddle on his front. Both hands, now whole arms, heaved and a body rose up out of the snow. It was haggard and pathetic, and its head was covered in snow. The figure wretched. Dain feared that body parts would come from its mouth. It coughed repeatedly and Dain could feel something spilling onto him. 

 He kicked away and tried to rise. The stranger hung onto him with even more desperate fervour. 

 “No,” it coughed. It was not a spoken word, nor even a cry. “No,” it called again as though each utterance tore its innards apart. 

 Dain tried again for his dagger and, managing to open his coat this time, was able to unsheathe it. He thrust his weapon forth again and was horrified to miss. Except he had not truly missed for, as Dain retracted his blade, he felt something touch his wrist. 

 Straining his neck, Dain saw that he had forced his arm through a complete hole in the figure’s torso. It was almost a clean circle if not for the manner in which nothing was staying in its proper place. He retracted his arm, pulling bits of unknown matter with it. He cried out in abhorrence. He pushed away at the arms and tried to stand. No sooner was he erect, than he was falling flat in the snow once more. The grip on his left ankle was tighter than ever and Dain could feel himself being overpowered and pulled. He stretched out to dig his dagger into the ground as some form of anchor. He strained and felt himself pawed backwards. He stabbed at the ground but his dagger fell back in a cloud of snow. He dropped it and with sheer desperation, dug his fingers in deep. Finding what grip he could, Dain retracted his muscles to pull himself along. Alas, the icy grip on legs was more powerful and he moved backwards with slow precision. 

 Dain screamed and clawed at the ground. He felt the chill of his toes rise to encompass his ankles and legs. When he looked down, he found his lower half enveloped in snow. The mysterious puller was down below; his ceaseless pull could still be felt. Dain continued to descend. No longer feeling any emotions like shame, he cried out in dread. 

“Help!” he cried. “Please, somebody help me!” He could not feel anything below his neck and as he went deeper, the icy coldness was rising up his body. His numb fingers were useless now and could not grip a thing. When Dain finally died, he was encased several feet below the surface. 

 He would eventually be discovered during the spring time. This was nothing out of the ordinary for the subjects of the North Eastern Kingdoms. The harsh winters were such that every spring turned up mosaics of perfectly preserved vagrants and scoundrels who had been caught out in the snow. They would thaw out gradually and if their flesh was not ripped off by wild beasts, they would be picked off by rats, pigeons and other vermin.  

What was unusual about this corpse however, as Ronan, the brewer’s lad discovered, was its peculiar preservation. The face was the most obvious thing; the expression of sheer terror was an image that frightened Ronan when he was alone in the dark with his nightmares. He often wondered and imagined what unworldly horrors could have inspired it and when he had thought too long, Ronan would conclude that these eyes must have seen the wide-open gates of the underworld itself. What was less immediately striking, and yet more enduring in its ungodly implications, was the corpse’s heart. It remained unaffected by the changing of the seasons and remained frozen long after the rest of the body had decayed. After several months, a frozen heart remained secured to the pathway. When the rest of the corpses had been shifted, none could bring themselves to move the heart. Several had tried but when they approached, they fell down on their knees and wept. Each of them described the greatest terror of their earthly experience. Thus, the heart was slowly ignored. Seeing it on each journey became a normalised part of daily routine. Ronan, in his wild imagination, was of the firm belief that, should the ice ever finally crack, the heart would be heard beating once more.